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Previously: Tuesday: First Full Day

I stayed at San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm for three days. Here’s the third installment about my time there.

The first 40 minute meditation period today was silent except for the voice again, which gave a longer thought, starting with “Full awareness” then continued onto something about the breath and suchness. My awareness tended to center on my legs, which ached, and set off judgments about myself and what I think I’m doing here. Both of my legs went completely numb (on a positive note, they don’t hurt if I can’t feel them)! and I was fretting about having to stand up eventually. I knew I could take a rest pose, but was inhibited about doing so. Finally I reasoned with myself that it was better to take the rest pose than to continue obsessing about it, so I did the quiet bow, unwound my legs, and hugged my knees while getting back into a zazen head space. It helped immensely, and went I went back to the cross-legged pose, I had an easier time of it.

An owl hooted outside. Twilight crept in via the windows at the tops of the walls, and we sat silent and still through the morning bird chorus.

Today after the first session of zazen we had just a short chant and three full bows, and then we all filed out of the zendo. On Wednesdays, everyone works in the fields instead of a second period of zazen and chanting service.

Everyone changes into work cloths lines up silently at the tool shed in the field area; once everyone is present, incense is offered and the work assignments are given. I was on the team sent to pick plums.

We’re told to clean out the old plums from under the tree and put them into a pile to be composted, then put the tarp down and shake the tree so the ripe plums fall, and gather them up into buckets. As soon as the person instructing us leave, people started shaking the tree right away and picking up ripe plums off the ground, throwing the rotten ones already on the ground aside. I’m kind of confused by this complete disregard for the instructions we were given, but decide that it’s kind of nice to not worry about it, so I join in with gathering up the plums. It certainly is satisfying to hear all the plums fall when a branch is shook. At some point, someone vigorously shakes a branch that I’m standing right under, and plums rain down on my head…it hurts, and anger rises in my mind. I see it coming and it happens again and I’m really irritated and angry; then I realize that since I saw it coming, I could have just stepped aside and avoided it all.

We pick a LOT of plums; several buckets full. Then bow out and are done until breakfast. This morning it was scrambled eggs with cheese and scallions and potatoes, oatmeal and juice. Everyone seems happy to have the boost of protein. I talk with some guest students and am getting to know some people here.

The routine continues. At the work meeting there’s an announcement that tonight at dinner there will be a gathering of gay, lesbian, transgendered, transsexual, and similar folks at the round table in the dining room. Bernt asks, “How about their friends?” The woman making the announcement replies, “Well, since everyone here IS their friends, I don’t see how that make it a special table.” Bernt makes a face and looks crestfallen and everyone laughs. She shakes her head, “I’m sorry, yes, that’s correct, AND their friends.” and everyone laughs again. Someone else mentions that someone has a birthday, and we sing happy birthday to him.

For work, we do morning dishes again, and I scrape again. I pay more attention to handling things and notice that there really is a lot of aching in my hands. It’s interesting to be in an environment of people who are so in touch with their own bodies…it starts rubbing off a little. I’m not very good about listening to my body, and I get the feeling that I’ll have to endure a lot of complaints from it as I try to reconcile with it after years of ignoring it.

After a break, we’re sent to work maintenance. We have to move some old wood to get ready for a new load of firewood coming in, and someone will have to mow a lawn. First we move some volleyball net poles for the mowing (they don’t play volleyball anymore…too many people twisted ankles). The poles are set into cement within old tires, so they’re heavy to move; we find Black Widow spiders under one of the poles and move it gingerly.

We move on to the wood pile; our job is to pick out pieces of wood with no treatment and no nails and load these into the truck; we’ll unload them into a pile that will be left to decay back into the local environment. Once the truck is loaded, two of us go to unload with Shojo and two stay to nail up corrugated metal sheeting along the sides of the wood shed.

We get in the truck and ride down the farm road and then back up along a path to a spot where the new wood-pile-to-decay will be made. First we’re given machetes to clear a small area for the pile; the plants we’re chopping down are poison hemlock, which looks sort of like a cross between cow parsnip and dill; it’s tall, over our heads, all green with reddish stems near the bottom.

We unload and go back for more; after the truck is loaded again, we switch teams and I help nail up the metal walls of the shed. Finally we do a third load of wood. It’s pretty satisfying how quickly we can load the truck. People here are very confident about needs to be done, and it tends to get done quickly, but no one seems to be rushing. No one is singled out for praise, and everyone works at their own pace. My mind likes to compare what I am doing, how much I am carrying, with others, but there’s really no sense of competition here and I’m able to relax and just quietly work, leaving behind the urgency to rush, to get noticed, to compete.

After work, I shower, change, and throw my work clothing into the laundry again on the way to lunch. Lunch today is soups…all of them left over from the past week…and salad; it sounds like this is the traditional Wednesday lunch. It’s a smart pattern…everyone already had a substantial breakfast after the farm work in the morning, and there will be a lot of cooking for Sunday’s special meals, so they’ll want the fridge space.

A woman named Allison sits near me at lunch…she’s a visitor for meetings with the staff about long-range planning. She’s with an architecture firm from Seattle and they’re trying to figure out how the center can evolve being ecologically sensitive to the watershed that it sits within; it sounds like a real challenge. Green Gulch Farm was a ranch before it was donated to the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). The zendo itself is a renovated barn which actually sits above the stream…it was designed that way so that the waste from the cows could just be dumped into the stream and carried away. Part of the stream has been diverted into a concrete ditch that runs along the guest house and past the zendo, and part of the stream is still underground underneath the zendo. In addition to wanting to do the right thing environmentally, SFZC will have to coordinate with several agencies and navigate those bureaucracies at every turn. It will be enormously expensive.

After lunch, I throw my clothes in the dryer, go to library and browse the books and magazines. I read some articles about whether or not dogs have a Buddha nature, and mostly just establish that I miss my own dog. I look through some art books to try find an image of thousand-eyed Kuan Yin but don’t find it. Afterwards, I browse the bookstore and am happy to find a copy of the zendo chant book for sale as well as an introduction to Buddhism. I still feel unsure about exactly what Buddhism is, what Zen is, and what I’m doing here with all of it. But uncertainty is a recurring them in my experience with it…with the rituals and etiquette, even back home at comparatively casual Stone Creek, it’s hard to know if you’re doing it “right”. Very little is written down to study; one has to accept that one will make lots of mistakes, and in making those mistakes, one can learn the concept of loving kindness by example in the subtle ways you are corrected.

The day continues, overcast and cold. Someone starts a fire in the stove in the center of the guest house; I read, nap, and write most of the rest of the afternoon.

In early evening, the fog finally starts to retreat and the sun comes out for a brief moment before ducking out of sight from the valley, and I decide to go out for a while. The deer are standing outside along the path, a young buck with just a bit of antler, and a small doe…they watch me but stand their ground.

Green Gulch deer.

I go up the path to the yurt that’s used as a meeting area to snoop around. I’ve been interested in yurts as a living space, and take lots of photos and just sit in it, imagining what the space would be like if Steve and I lived in one. This one is set up as one large meeting area, with small buildings on the deck for a bathroom, kitchen and storage area. I decide that we could probably make it work, but we’d need to have additional structures for office/work spaces. I love the big skylight, and the high ceilings. The lattice structure over the windows seems a little bar-like and might take some getting used to. It definitely feels more building-like than tent-like.

The yurt.

Dinner tonight is fettichine and salad, and lots of conversation. I sit with the person staying in the room next to me (she’s full-time guest, not a work-practice retreatant like me) and a couple from Tennessee…she’s a work-practice retreatant like me, and he’s a guest student living in the dorm, participating in the community full-time during his stay. She doesn’t seem to be a practicing Zen Buddhist, but seems to be enjoying her stay while her husband participates. It’s interesting to see how this works out (and nice to see it apparently actually working out)…it seems like many people come to zen as adults when they are older and already married, and their partner may not share their interest or have it to the same extent. I’m of course selfishly interested in how it all works out.

We sit after dinner for a long time talking; but I also want quiet time, starting to feel sad that my stay is coming for a close, and so excuse myself to go for a walk. I’ve noticed that the full-time guests are much more talkative, almost starved for conversation, than those are participating with the community on any level.

I’d wanted to go to Middle Green Gulch trail, but missed the turn and ended up out at the Coast Trail, going up a ways to overlook Muir Beach for sunset. A rabbit didn’t mind me passing him on the trail and sits, watching, before jumping into the grass after I’m already past. The moon peeks over the ridge.

Muir Beach

Back to my room, and to sleep.

Next: Thursday: Last Day